Born an
ethnic Serb in the village of Smiljan, Croatian Military Frontier,
Austrian
Empire (today's Croatia).He was a
subject of the Austrian
Empire by birth and later became an American citizen. After his
demonstration of wireless communication through radio in 1894 and after being the victor in the
"War of Currents", he was widely
respected as one of the greatest electrical engineers who worked in
America. Much of his early work pioneered modern electrical
engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking
importance. During this period, in the United States, Tesla's fame
rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular
culture, but due to his eccentric personality and his seemingly
unbelievable and sometimes bizarre claims about possible scientific
and technological developments, Tesla was ultimately ostracized and
regarded as a mad scientist. Tesla
never put much focus on his finances. It is said he died
impoverished, at the age of 86.

Biography

Early years

His baptismal certificate reports that he was born on 28 June
(N.S.10
July), 1856, to Father Milutin Tesla, a priest in the
Serbian Orthodox Church,
Metropolitanate of Sremski Karlovci and Đuka Mandić.His paternal origin is
thought to be either of one of the local Serb
clans in the Tara valley or from the Herzegovinian noble Pavle Orlović His mother Đuka , daughter
of a Serbian Orthodox Church priest came from a family domiciled in
Lika and Banija, but with
deeper origins to Kosovo. She
was talented in making home craft tools and memorized many Serbian epic poems, but never learned to
read.

Nikola was the fourth of five children, having one older brother
(Dane, who was killed in a horse-riding accident when Nikola was five)
and three sisters (Milka, Angelina and Marica). His family moved to
Gospić in 1862. Tesla went to school in Karlovac. He finished a four year term in the span of
three years.

c.1879 at age 23

Tesla then
studied electrical
engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz
(1875). While there, he studied the uses of alternating
current. Some sources say he received Baccalaureate degrees from
the university at Graz. However, the university claims that he did
not receive a degree and did not continue beyond the first semester
of his third year, during which he stopped attending lectures. In
December 1878 he left Graz and broke all relations with his family.
His friends thought that he had drowned in Mura. He went to Maribor, (today's Slovenia), where he was first employed as an assistant
engineer for a year. He suffered a nervous breakdown during this time.
Tesla was
later persuaded by his father to attend the Charles-Ferdinand University in
Prague, which he
attended for the summer term of 1880. Here, he was
influenced by Ernst Mach. However, after
his father died, he left the university, having completed only one
term.

Tesla engaged in reading many works, memorizing complete books,
supposedly having a photographic
memory. Tesla related in his autobiography that he experienced
detailed moments of inspiration. During his early life, Tesla was
stricken with illness time and time again. He suffered a peculiar
affliction in which blinding flashes of light would appear before
his eyes, often accompanied by hallucinations. Much of the time the
visions were linked to a word or idea he might have come across;
just by hearing the name of an item, he would involuntarily
envision it in realistic detail. Modern-day synesthetes report similar symptoms. Tesla would
visualise an invention in his brain with extreme precision,
including all dimensions, before moving to the construction stage;
a technique sometimes known as picture
thinking. He typically did not make drawings by hand, instead
just conceiving all ideas with his mind. Tesla also often had
flashbacks to events that had happened previously in his life; this
began to happen during childhood.

In 1880,
he moved to Budapest to work under Tivadar Puskás in a telegraph company,the National Telephone Company. There, he met Nebojša
Petrović, a young, Serbian inventor who lived in Austria. Although
their encounter was brief, they did work on a project together
using twin turbines to create continual power. On the opening of
the telephone exchange in
Budapest, 1881, Tesla became the chief electrician to the company,
and was later engineer for the country's first telephone system. He
also developed a device that, according to some, was a telephonerepeater or
amplifier, but according to others could
have been the first loudspeaker.

United States and France

In 1882
he moved to Paris, France, to
work as an engineer for the Continental Edison Company,
designing improvements to electric equipment brought overseas from
Edison's ideas. In the same year, Tesla conceived the
induction motor and began developing
various devices that use rotating magnetic fields for which
he received patents in 1888.

Soon thereafter, Tesla was awakened from a dream in which his
mother had died, "And I knew that this was so". After her death,
Tesla fell ill. He spent two to three weeks recuperating in
Gospić and the village of Tomingaj near Gračac, his mother's birthplace.

On 6 June
1884, Tesla first arrived in the US in New York City with little besides a letter of recommendation from
Charles Batchelor, a former
employer. In the letter of recommendation to Thomas Edison, Batchelor wrote, "I know two
great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man."
Edison hired Tesla to work for his Edison Machine Works.
Tesla's work for Edison began with simple electrical engineering
and quickly progressed to solving some of the company's most
difficult problems. Tesla was even offered the task of completely
redesigning the Edison company's direct
currentgenerators.

Tesla claims he was offered US$50,000 (~ US$1.1 million in
2007, adjusted for inflation) if he redesigned Edison's inefficient
motor and generators, making an improvement in both service and
economy. Tesla said he worked night and day on the project and gave
the Edison Company several profitable new
patents in the process. In 1885 when Tesla inquired about the
payment for his work, Edison replied, "Tesla, you don't understand
our American humor," thus breaking
his word.Earning a mere US$18 per week, Tesla would have had to
work for 53 years to earn the amount he was promised. The offer was
equal to the initial capital of the company. Tesla then immediately
resigned when he was refused a raise to US$25 per week.

Tesla, in need of work, eventually found himself digging ditches
for a short period of time for the Edison company. He saw the
manual labor as a terrible job, but Tesla used this time to focus
on his AC polyphase system.

Middle years

In 1886, Tesla formed his own company, Tesla Electric Light
& Manufacturing. The initial financial investors disagreed with Tesla on his plan for an
alternating current motor and eventually relieved him of his duties
at the company. Tesla worked in New York as a common laborer from 1886 to 1887 to feed
himself and raise capital for his next project. In 1887, he
constructed the initial brushless
alternating current induction motor,
which he demonstrated to the American Institute of Electrical
Engineers (now IEEE) in
1888. In
the same year, he developed the principles of his Tesla coil and began working with George Westinghouse at Westinghouse Electric &
Manufacturing Company'sPittsburgh labs. Westinghouse listened to his ideas for
polyphase systems which would allow transmission of alternating
current electricity over long distances.

In April 1887, Tesla began investigating what would later be called
X ray using his own single terminal vacuum tubes (similar to his patent ). This
device differed from other early X-ray tubes in that it had no
target electrode. The modern term for the phenomenon produced by
this device is bremsstrahlung (or braking
radiation). We now know that this device operated by emitting
electrons from the single electrode through
a combination of field electron
emission and thermionic
emission. Once liberated, electrons are strongly repelled by
the high electric field near the
electrode during negative voltage peaks from the oscillating HV
output of the Tesla Coil, generating X rays as they collide with
the glass envelope. He also used Geissler
tubes. By 1892, Tesla became aware of the skin damage that
Wilhelm Röntgen later
identified as an effect of X rays.

In the early research, Tesla devised several experimental setups to
produce X rays. Tesla held that, with his circuits, the "instrument
will [... enable one to] generate Roentgen rays of much greater
power than obtainable with ordinary apparatus".He also commented on
the hazards of working with his circuit and single node X-ray
producing devices. Of his many notes in the early investigation of
this phenomenon, he attributed the skin damage to various causes.
One of the options for the cause, which is not in conformity with
conventional X-ray production, was that the ozone generated rather than the radiation was
responsible. He believed early on that damage to the skin was not
due to the Roentgen rays, but the ozone generated in contact with
the skin, and to a lesser extent, nitrous
acid. Tesla held that these were in fact longitudinal waves, such as those produced
in waves in plasma. In a plasma or a
confined space, there can exist waves which are either longitudinal
or transverse, or a mixture of both. There are known examples of
this and these plasma waves can occur in the situation of force-free magnetic fields. His
hypotheses and experiments were confirmed by others.

Tesla continued research in the field and, later, observed an
assistant severely "burnt" by X rays in his lab. He performed
several experiments prior to Roentgen's discovery (including
photographing the bones of his hand;
later, he sent these images to Roentgen) but didn't make his
findings widely known; much of his research was lost in the 5th
Avenue lab fire of March 1895.

A "world system" for "the transmission of electrical energy without
wires" that depends upon the electrical conductivity of the earth
was proposed in which transmission in various natural media with
current that passes between the two points are used to power
devices. In a practical wireless energy transmission system using
this principle, a high-power ultraviolet beam might be used to form
a vertical ionized channel in the air directly above the
transmitter-receiver stations. The same concept is used in virtual
lightning rods, the electrolaserelectroshock weapon,and has been
proposed for disabling vehicles.

On 30 July 1891, he became a naturalized
citizen of the United States at the age of 35. Tesla established his
35 South Fifth
Avenue laboratory in New York during this same
year. Later, Tesla would establish his Houston Street
laboratory in New York at 46 E. Houston
Street. There, at one point while conducting mechanical resonance experiments with
electro-mechanical oscillators he generated a resonance of several
surrounding buildings but, due to the frequencies involved, not his
own building, causing complaints to the police. As the speed grew
he hit the resonant frequency of his own
building and, belatedly realizing the danger, he was forced to
apply a sledgehammer to terminate the
experiment, just as the astonished police arrived.He also lit
electric lamps wirelessly at both of the New York locations,
providing evidence for the potential of wireless power
transmission.

Tesla also explained the principles of the rotating magnetic field
and induction motor by demonstrating
how to make an egg made of copper stand on
end in his demonstration of the device he constructed known as the
"Egg of
Columbus".

Also in the late 1880s, Tesla and Edison became adversaries in part
due to Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric power distribution over the more
efficient alternating current advocated by Tesla and Westinghouse.
Until Tesla invented the induction motor, AC's advantages for long
distance high voltage transmission were
counterbalanced by the inability to operate motors on AC. As a
result of the "War of Currents,"
Edison and Westinghouse went nearly bankrupt, so in 1897, Tesla
released Westinghouse from contract, providing Westinghouse a break
from Tesla's patent royalties. Also in 1897, Tesla researched
radiation which led to setting up
the basic formulation of cosmic
rays.

When Tesla was forty-one years old, he filed the first basic radio
patent ( ). A year later, he demonstrated a radio-controlled boat to the US military,
believing that the military would want things such as
radio-controlled torpedoes. Tesla had
developed the "Art of Telautomatics", a form of robotics, as well as the technology of remote
control. In 1898, he demonstrated a radio-controlled
boat to the public during an electrical exhibition at Madison
Square Garden. This devices had an innovative coherer and a series of electronic logic gates . Tesla called his boat a
"teleautomaton". Radio remote control remained a novelty until the
1960s. In the same year, Tesla devised an "electric igniter" or
spark plug for Internal combustion gasoline
engines. He gained , "Electrical Igniter for Gas Engines", on this
mechanical ignition system. Tesla
lived in the former Gerlach Hotel, renamed The Radio Wave building,
at 49 W 27th St. (between Broadway and Sixth Avenue), Lower Manhattan, before the end of the
century where he conducted the radio wave experiments. A commemorative plaque was placed on the
building in 1977 to honor his work.

Tesla researched ways to transmit power and energy wirelessly over
long distances (via transverse waves, to a lesser extent, and, more
readily, longitudinal waves). He transmitted extremely low frequencies through
the ground as well as between the Earth's surface and the Kennelly–Heaviside layer.
He received patents on wireless transceivers that developed
standing waves by this method. In his experiments, he made
mathematical calculations and computations based on his experiments
and discovered that the resonant frequency of the Earth was
approximately 8 Hertz (Hz). In the 1950s, researchers confirmed
that the resonant frequency of the Earth's ionospheric cavity was
in this range (later named the Schumann resonance).

In Colorado, Tesla carried out various long distance power
transmission experiments. Tesla effect is the application
of a type of electrical conduction (that is, the movement of energy
through space and matter; not just the production of voltage across
a conductor). Through longitudinal
waves, Tesla transferred energy to receiving devices. He sent
electrostatic forces through natural media across a conductor
situated in the changing magnetic flux
and transferred power to a conducting receiving device (such as
Tesla's wireless bulbs).

In the Colorado Springs lab, Tesla observed unusual signals that he
later thought may have been evidence of extraterrestrial radio communications
coming from Venus or Mars.He noticed repetitive signals from his receiver
which were substantially different from the signals he had noted
from storms and earth noise. Specifically, he later recalled that
the signals appeared in groups of one, two, three, and four clicks
together. Tesla had mentioned before this event and many times
after that he thought his inventions could be used to talk with other planets.
There have even been claims that he invented a "Teslascope" for just such a purpose. It is
debatable what type of signals Tesla received or whether he picked
up anything at all. Research has suggested that Tesla may have had
a misunderstanding of the new technology he was working with,or
that the signals Tesla observed may have simply been an observation
of a non-terrestrial natural radio source such as the Jovianplasma
torus signals.

Tesla
left Colorado
Springs on 7 January 1900. The lab was torn down and
its contents sold to pay debts. The Colorado experiments prepared
Tesla for his next project, the establishment of a wireless power
transmission facility that would be known as Wardenclyffe. Tesla
was granted for the means of increasing the intensity of electrical
oscillations. The United
States Patent Office classification system currently assigns
this patent to the primary Class 178/43 ("telegraphy/space
induction"), although the other applicable classes include 505/825
("low temperature superconductivity-related apparatus").

Later years

In 1900, with US$150,000 (51 % from J.Pierpont
Morgan), Tesla began planning the Wardenclyffe
Tower facility. In June 1902, Tesla's lab
operations were moved to Wardenclyffe from Houston Street. The
tower was finally dismantled for scrap during World War I. Newspapers of the time labeled
Wardenclyffe "Tesla's million-dollar folly". In 1904, the US
Patent Office reversed its decision
and awarded Guglielmo Marconi the
patent for radio, and Tesla began his fight to re-acquire the radio
patent. On his 50th birthday in 1906, Tesla demonstrated his
200 hp (150 kW) 16,000 rpm
bladeless turbine. During 1910–1911 at
the Waterside Power Station in New York, several of his
bladeless turbine engines were tested at 100–5000 hp.

Since the Nobel Prize in
Physics was awarded to Marconi
for radio in 1909, Thomas Edison and
Tesla were mentioned as potential laureates to share the Nobel Prize of 1915 in a press
dispatch, leading to one of several Nobel Prize controversies. Some
sources have claimed that due to their animosity toward each other
neither was given the award, despite their enormous scientific
contributions, and that each sought to minimize the other one's
achievements and right to win the award, that both refused to ever
accept the award if the other received it first, and that both
rejected any possibility of sharing it.

In the following events after the rumors, neither Tesla nor Edison
won the prize (although Edison did receive one of 38 possible bids
in 1915, and Tesla did receive one bid out of 38 in 1937).Earlier,
Tesla alone was rumored to have been nominated for the Nobel Prize of 1912. The rumored
nomination was primarily for his experiments with tuned circuits
using high-voltage high-frequency resonant transformers.

In 1915, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Marconi attempting,
unsuccessfully, to obtain a court injunction against Marconi's
claims. After Wardenclyffe, Tesla built the Telefunken Wireless Station in Sayville, Long
Island. Some of what he wanted to achieve at Wardenclyffe was
accomplished with the Telefunken Wireless. In 1917, the facility
was seized and torn down by the Marines, because it was suspected
that it could be used by German spies.

Before World War I, Tesla looked
overseas for investors to fund his research. When the war started,
Tesla lost the funding he was receiving from his patents in
European countries. After the war ended, Tesla made predictions
regarding the relevant issues of the post-World War I environment,
in a printed article (20 December 1914). Tesla believed that the
League of Nations was not a remedy
for the times and issues. Tesla started to exhibit pronounced
symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder
in the years following. He became obsessed with the number three;
he often felt compelled to walk around a block three times before
entering a building, demanded a stack of three folded cloth napkins
beside his plate at every meal, etc. The nature of OCD was little
understood at the time and no treatments were available, so his
symptoms were considered by some to be evidence of partial
insanity, and this undoubtedly hurt what was left of his
reputation.

At this
time, he was staying at The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, renting in an arrangement for deferred
payments. Eventually, the Wardenclyffe deed was turned over
to George Boldt, proprietor of the
Waldorf-Astoria, to pay a US$20,000 debt. In 1917, around the time
that the Wardenclyffe Tower was demolished by Boldt to make the
land a more viable real estate asset, Tesla received AIEE's highest
honor, the Edison Medal.

Tesla, in August 1917, first established principles regarding
frequency and power level for the first primitive radar units.In 1934, Émile Girardeau, working with the first
French radar systems, stated he was building said systems
"conceived according to the principles stated by Tesla".
By the
1920s, Tesla was reportedly negotiating with the United
Kingdom government about a ray system. Tesla had
also stated that efforts had been made to steal the so called
"death ray". It is suggested that the removal of the Chamberlain government ended
negotiations.

On Tesla's seventy-fifth birthday in 1931, Time magazine put him on its cover. The cover
caption noted his contribution to electrical power generation. Tesla
received his last patent in 1928 for an apparatus for aerial transportation which was the first instance
of VTOLaircraft. By the end of 1931, Tesla released
"On Future Motive Power" which covered an ocean thermal energy
conversion system. In 1934, Tesla wrote to consul Janković of
his homeland. The letter contained a message of gratitude to
Mihajlo Pupin who had initiated a
donation scheme by which American companies could support Tesla.
Tesla refused the assistance, choosing instead to live on a modest
pension received from Yugoslavia, and to continue his
research.

In 1936, Tesla wrote in a telegram to Vladko Maček: "I'm equally proud of my
Serbian origin and my Croatian homeland. Long live all
Yugoslavs."

Field theories

When he was eighty-one, Tesla stated he had completed a "dynamic
theory of gravity". He stated that it was "worked out in all
details" and that he hoped to soon give it to the world.The theory
was never published.

The bulk of the theory was developed between 1892 and 1894, during
the period that he was conducting experiments with high frequency
and high potential electromagnetism and
patenting devices for their use. Reminiscent of Mach's principle, Tesla stated in 1925
that:

Directed-energy weapon

Later in life, Tesla made remarkable claims concerning a "teleforce" weapon. The press called it a "peace
ray" or death ray.In total, the components
and methods included:

An apparatus for producing manifestations of energy in free air
instead of in a high vacuum as in the past.
This, according to Tesla in 1934, was accomplished.

A mechanism for generating tremendous electrical force. This,
according to Tesla, was also accomplished.

A means of intensifying and amplifying the force developed by
the second mechanism.

A new method for producing a tremendous electrical repelling
force. This would be the projector, or gun, of the invention.

Tesla worked on plans for a directed-energy weapon from the early
1900s until his death. In 1937, Tesla composed a treatise entitled
"The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy
through the Natural Media" concerning charged particle beams.Tesla published
the document in an attempt to expound on the technical description
of a "superweapon that would put an end
to all war". This treatise of the particle beam is currently in the Nikola Tesla
Museum archive in Belgrade. It described an open ended vacuum tube with
a gas jet seal that allowed particles to exit, a method of charging
particles to millions of volts, and a method of creating and
directing nondispersive particle streams (through electrostatic repulsion).

The weapon could be used against ground based infantry or for antiaircraft purposes.

Tesla
tried to interest the US War
Department in the device.He also offered this invention
to European countries.None of the governments purchased a contract
to build the device. He was unable to act on his plans.

Theoretical inventions

Another of Tesla's theorized inventions is commonly referred to as
Tesla's Flying
Machine, which appears to resemble an ion-propelled aircraft. Tesla claimed that one of
his life goals was to create a flying machine that would run
without the use of an airplane engine, wings, ailerons, propellers, or
an onboard fuel source. Initially, Tesla pondered about the idea of
a flying craft that would fly using an electric motor powered by
grounded base stations. As time progressed, Tesla suggested that
perhaps such an aircraft could be run entirely
electro-mechanically. The theorized appearance would typically take
the form of a cigar or saucer..

Personal life

Tesla may have suffered from obsessive-compulsive
disorder,and had many unusual quirks and phobias. He did things in threes, and was adamant
about staying in a hotel room with a number divisible by three.
Tesla was also noted to be physically revolted by jewelry, notably
pearl earrings. He was fastidious about cleanliness and hygiene,
and was by all accounts mysophobic.

Tesla was
obsessed with pigeons, ordering special seeds for the pigeons he
fed in Central
Park and even bringing some into his hotel room with
him. Tesla was an animal-lover, often reflecting contentedly
about a childhood cat, "The Magnificent Mačak." Tesla never
married. He was celibate and claimed that
his chastity was very helpful to his scientific abilities.
Nonetheless there have been numerous accounts of women vying for
Tesla's affection, even some madly in love with him. Tesla, though
polite, behaved rather ambivalently to these women in the romantic
sense.

Tesla was prone to alienating himself and was generally
soft-spoken. However, when he did engage in a social life, many
people spoke very positively and admiringly of him. Robert
Underwood Johnson described him as attaining a "distinguished
sweetness, sincerity, modesty, refinement, generosity, and force."
His loyal secretary, Dorothy Skerrit, wrote: "his genial smile and
nobility of bearing always denoted the gentlemanly characteristics
that were so ingrained in his soul." Tesla's friend Hawthorne wrote
that "seldom did one meet a scientist or engineer who was also a
poet, a philosopher, an appreciator of fine music, a linguist, and
a connoisseur of food and drink."

Nevertheless, Tesla displayed the occasional cruel streak; he
openly expressed his disgust for overweight people, once firing a
secretary because of her weight. He was quick to criticize others'
clothing as well, on several occasions demanding a subordinate to
go home and change her dress.

Tesla was widely known for his great showmanship, presenting his
innovations and demonstrations to the public as an artform, almost
like a magician. This seems to conflict with his observed
reclusiveness; Tesla was a complicated figure. He refused to hold
conventions without his Tesla coil blasting electricity throughout
the room, despite the audience often being terrified, though he
assured them everything was perfectly safe.

In middle age, Tesla became very close friends with Mark Twain. They spent a lot of time together in
his lab and elsewhere.

Tesla remained bitter in the aftermath of his incident with Edison.
The day after Edison died the New
York Times contained extensive coverage of Edison's life,
with the only negative opinion coming from Tesla, who was quoted as
saying: Shortly before he died, Edison said that his biggest
mistake had been in trying to develop direct current, rather than
the vastly superior alternating current system that Tesla had put
within his grasp.

Tesla was good friends with Robert Underwood Johnson. He had
amicable relations with Francis
Marion Crawford, Stanford White,
Fritz Lowenstein, George Scherff, and Kenneth Swezey. He ripped up
a Westinghouse
contract that would have made him the world's first billionaire, in
part because of the implications it would have on his future vision
of free power, and in part because it would run Westinghouse out of
business, and Tesla had no desire to deal with the creditors.

Tesla
lived the last ten years of his life in a two-room suite on the
33rd floor of the Hotel New Yorker, room 3327. There, near the end of his life,
Tesla showed signs of encroaching mental
illness, claiming to be visited by a specific white pigeon
daily. Several biographers note that Tesla viewed the death of the
pigeon as a "final blow" to himself and his work.

Tesla believed that war could not be avoided
until the cause for its recurrence was removed, but was opposed to
wars in general.He sought to reduce distance, such as in
communication for better understanding, transportation, and
transmission of energy, as a means to ensure friendly international relations.

Like many of his era, Tesla, a life-long bachelor, became a
proponent of a self-imposed selective
breeding version of eugenics. In a 1937
interview, he stated:

In 1926, Tesla commented on the ills of the social subservience of
women and the struggle of women toward gender equality, indicated that humanity's
future would be run by "Queen Bees". He believed that women would
become the dominant sex in the future.

In his later years Tesla became a vegetarian. In an article for Century Illustrated
Magazine he wrote: "It is certainly preferable to raise
vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from
the established barbarous habit." Tesla argued that it is wrong to
eat uneconomic meat when large numbers of people are starving; he
also believed that plant food was "superior to [meat] in regard to
both mechanical and mental performance". He also argued that animal
slaughter was "wanton and cruel".

In his final years he suffered from extreme sensitivity to light,
sound and other influences.

Death

Tesla
died of heart failure alone in room
3327 of the New Yorker
Hotel, on 7 January 1943. Despite having sold his
AC electricity patents, Tesla died with significant debts on the
books. Later that year the US Supreme
Court upheld Tesla's patent number 645576, in effect
recognizing him as the inventor of radio.

Soon after his death Tesla's safe was opened by his nephew Sava
Kosanović. Shortly thereafter Tesla's papers and other property
were empounded by the United States' Alien Property Custodian office in
Tesla's compound at the Manhattan Warehouse, even though he was a
naturalized citizen.
At the time of his death, Tesla had been working on the Teleforce weapon, or 'death ray,' that he had
unsuccessfully marketed to the US War Department. It appears that
Teleforce was related to his research into ball lightning and plasma, and was conceived as a particle beam weapon. The US government
did not find a prototype of the device in the safe. After the FBI
was contacted by the War Department, his papers were declared to be
top secret. The personal
effects were sequestered on the advice of presidential advisers;
J.Edgar
Hoover declared the case most secret, because of the nature of
Tesla's inventions and patents. One document stated that "[he] is
reported to have some 80 trunks in different places containing
transcripts and plans having to do with his experiments
[...]".

Tesla's family and the Yugoslav embassy struggled with the American
authorities to gain these items after his death due to the
potential significance of some of his research. Eventually Mr.
Kosanović won possession of the materials, which are now housed in
the Nikola Tesla Museum.

Legacy and honors

He did not like posing for portraits, doing so only once for
princess Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy.
His wish was to have a sculpture made by his close friend, Croatian
sculptorIvan Meštrović, who was at that
time in United States, but he died before getting a chance to see
it. Meštrović made a bronze bust (1952) that is
held in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade and a statue (1955/56)
placed at the Ruđer
Bošković Institute in Zagreb.
This statue was moved to Nikola Tesla Street in Zagreb's city
centre on the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth, with the Ruđer Bošković
Institute to receive a duplicate.In 1976, a bronze
statue of Tesla was placed at Niagara Falls, New York. A similar statue was also erected in his
hometown of Gospić in 1986.

The
SI unit tesla (T) for
measuring magnetic fieldB (also referred to as the magnetic flux
density and magnetic induction) was named in Tesla’s
honor at the Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures,
Paris in 1960. The Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) of which Tesla had
been vice president also created an award in recognition of Tesla.
Called the IEEE Nikola Tesla Award, it is given to individuals or a
team that has made outstanding contributions to the generation or
utilization of electric power, and is considered the most
prestigious award in the area of electric power.The crater Tesla on the far
side of the Moon and the minor planet2244 Tesla are also named after
him.

The company, Tesla was a large,
state-owned electrotechnical conglomerate in the former
Czechoslovakia. It was renamed in Tesla's honor from the previous
Electra on 7 March 1946. Some of its subsidiaries still trade in
the Czech
Republic.

An electric car company,
Tesla Motors, named their company in
tribute to Tesla. Their website states: The namesake of our
Tesla Roadster is the genius Nikola
Tesla [...] We‘re confident that if he were alive today,
Nikola Tesla would look over our car and nod his head with both
understanding and approval.

The Croatian subsidiary of Ericsson is also
named 'Ericsson Nikola Tesla
d.d'. ('Nikola Tesla' was a telephone hardware
company in Zagreb before
Ericsson bought it in the 1990s) in honor of Tesla's pioneering
work in wireless communication.

The year
2006 was celebrated by UNESCO as the
150th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla, scientist
, as well as being proclaimed by the governments of Croatia and
Serbia to be the Year of Tesla. On this
anniversary, 10 July 2006, the renovated village of Smiljan (which
had been demolished during the wars of the 1990s) was opened to the
public along with Tesla's house (as a memorial museum) and a new
multimedia center dedicated to the life and work of Tesla. The
parochial church of St. Peter and
Paul, where Tesla's father had held services, was renovated as
well. The museum and multimedia center are filled with replicas of
Tesla's work. The museum has collected almost all of the papers
ever published by, and about, Tesla; most of these provided by
Ljubo Vujovic from the Tesla Memorial Society.in New York.
Alongside Tesla's house, a monument created by sculptor Mile Blažević has been erected. In
the nearby city of Gospić, on the same date as the reopening of the
renovated village and museums, a higher
education school named Nikola Tesla was opened, and a replica
of the statue of Tesla made by Frano Kršinić (the original is in
Belgrade) was presented.

The song "Tesla's Hotel Room" by the Handsome Family, on their 2006 album
Last Days of Wonder, is a fictionalized account of Tesla's
later years at the New Yorker hotel.

Google honoured Tesla on his birthday on the
10th of July 2009 by displaying a doodle in the Google search home
page, that showed the G as a tesla
coil.

The heavy metal group Tesla, which made
famous the rock-ballad "Love Song", was named after Nikola
Tesla.

In the years since his death, many of his innovations, theories and
claims have been used, at times unsuitably and controversially, to
support various fringe theories that are regarded as unscientific.
Most of Tesla's own work conformed with the principles and methods
accepted by science, but his extravagant personality and sometimes
unrealistic claims, combined with his unquestionable genius, have
made him a popular figure among fringe theorists and believers in
conspiracies about "hidden knowledge". Even
in Tesla's time, some believed that he was actually an angelic
being from Venus sent to Earth to reveal scientific knowledge to
humanity. This belief is maintained in present times by followers
of Nuwaubianism.

Monuments

A
monument to Tesla was established at Niagara
Falls, New York, USA. This monument, portraying Tesla
reading a set of notes, is a copy of a monument standing in front
of the Belgrade University Faculty of Electrical Engineering.
Another
monument to Tesla, featuring him standing on a portion of an
alternator, was established at Queen
Victoria Park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. The monument was officially unveiled on
Sunday, 9 July 2006 on the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth.
The
monument was sponsored by St. George Serbian Church, Niagara Falls, and designed by Les Drysdale of Hamilton,
Ontario. Mr. Drysdale's design was the winning
design from an international competition. Tesla's most famous
statue is the one erected on 23 May 1879 at Sycamore Peak showing
him and Dr. Brian S. Whitecross. Belgrade International Airport is
called "Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport".

Portrayals in popular culture

Nikola Tesla has appeared in popular culture as a character in
books, films, radio, TV, music, live theatre, comics and video
games. The lack of recognition received by Tesla during his own
lifetime has made him a tragic and inspirational character well
suited to dramatic fiction. Tesla has particularly been seen in
science fiction where his inventions are well suited. The impact of
the technologies invented by Nikola Tesla is a recurring theme in
several types of science-fiction.

Walker, E. H. (1900). Leaders of the 19th century with some
noted characters of earlier times, their efforts and achievements
in advancing human progress vividly portrayed for the guidance of
present and future generations. Chicago: A.B. Kuhlman Co.,
p, 474.

David Bowie portrayed Tesla in the
2006 film The Prestige.
Tesla's time in Colorado Springs was the focus of several scenes in
the film, which featured speculations on the explosive power of
Tesla's electrical experiments.